The Sorrows Contract
by butchinthestreets
Summary: There's really no other way to look at it: from the time they first met to the time they died, they have really made no worse decision than taking the Sorrows contract. Zephyr/Sev twoshot, M for Language, Insinuation and heteroerotism.
1. First Meeting

There was a sound like a hornet slamming itself against a lightbulb, and the world went dark.

Later I found out that that was the sound of the electric current escaping its bounds, coursing its way through my mother's body and stopping her pulse. I didn't know that then. I didn't really know much of anything then, except that there was no light and I might as well be alone and I was panicking.

The breath that sucked its way through the teeth that were clamped shut around my tongue was heavy, tasted like gunpowder, like fear, like two-seconds-after-the-sound-of-the-thunder. Where my mother's heart was extinguished, mine was beating triple time, and I could feel my blood in my fingertips.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't _breathe_. I _couldn't breathe_.

That was the first time I was truly afraid – not for my life, not for my safety, not for the safety of the ones I love, but just _afraid_. I didn't know what was happening, I had nowhere to go, and _I couldn't breathe._

I screamed when he touched me, fingertips against cheek, and I bit my tongue when my jaw swung shut. My legs and my fists went out to him, my nails digging into his flesh, and I made him hurt. I made sure I made him hurt.

And I could breathe again. The light was still gone, but I was scrambling up and kicking away his limbs from mine, and I was reaching for the door, hands twisting out for _anything, anything, _and then he spoke.

"_Stop_," he told me. "_It's okay._"

I didn't believe him. But I stopped.

His name was Sev. He was my age.

I'd broken his toes and cut gouges into his chest. I didn't feel sorry about it. I never apologized.

After that, we got close. We watched the sun rise together, cleared away my mother's corpse, collected firewood together and burned her when we had enough. It was evening by then. As the sun set, we fucked like we were possessed, and then we collapsed. We were starving.

We made food together when we had the strength, through a haze of dizzy. His was burnt and mine was raw, but we ate like we hadn't eaten in days. He told me he hadn't, when we were done. I believed him.

Since then, we've never spent a night apart. We've grown into each other, and we've grown a _lot_. I trust him more than anything, and he trusts me in kind. The world is ours to wander, and we've gotten ourselves pretty good reputations.

I don't think I've ever been as scared as that first time I met him until now, but trust me, I am terrified. I think we might be dead, or as good as.

I told him that the Sorrows Contract was a bad idea. I _told him_.

I can't breathe.

* * *

**A/N: I think this might be one of the best things I've written in a while.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 24, 2012.  
**


	2. Last Moments

The parking lot is closing in on me until it feels tighter than the one room house that I lost my mother in. I want to reach out and grab Sev's hand, squeeze it until his fingers snap like my nerves are about to because they are a violin's _E_ string tuned to _C sharp_, but I cannot. That would be thoroughly unprofessional.

He knows how scared I am, because he feels it to. His shoulders are twisting, just a little, and I know his belly has become a hollow and he's reliving the days of famine. I want to cradle him and make him safe and shield him from the world.

I want. I want. I _want_.

What I have, though, is reality, which is the sting of the wind's whip against my cheek where his palm is meant to rest and the sound of Necromantic shadow scratching against my ears where only his voice should be.

"Something's wrong," says that voice, projected for our client to hear, and I savor the sound before getting out my gun.

"Miss Sorrows," I say, numb, on autopilot, "please get behind me."

She does, and I am a barrier between her and harm, for now, when I should be between Sev and everything else, but we can't all fucking get what we want, or so I've been informed. I find the source of the sound of the shadow, and I aim, ready to kill, knowing in my bones that I am already dead.

Baron Vengeous steps out, as expected, as we all knew he would, and I stare at him, and my death, aware only peripherally that Sev is stepping back, sentience divorced from sense. I follow him, and then I begin to fire.

I am hit in the chest with shadow and all I can think is _thank God that was me and not Sev_ because that's the only way I know how to think now, and then I'm listening to the single gunshot he manages to get off before he is cut through the heart, and I notice, I have to notice, the way the light plays around him in the moment before, giving him an aura, a halo, like it loves him. Like it loves the same thing I do.

He's not beautiful dead, though, and that makes me strangely happy. Through his brokenness, he looks like the child I knew. It reminds me of the first body we burnt together, and it reminds me that I have nothing left to live for.

I put my hand to his torso, let myself be covered in his substance, and then I force myself up. I have nothing to lose, and nothing to gain.

I get my gun back, and shoot for all I'm worth. No effect. I hit him with fire, and end up crumpled against a pillar for my efforts.

I have no magic left, and so I charge, and he cuts me through with shadows as sharp as blades. My lungs are punctured, and I choke on my own blood.

For the last time in my life, I cannot breathe.

* * *

**A/N: In writing this scene I realized two things: firstly, Zephyr's scene is a lot later in the book than I thought.  
**

**Secondly, I haven't read the book in a _really long time._**

**~Mademise Morte, June 24, 2012.  
**


End file.
